Customer Reviews

Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author is obviously a person of great vision and enormous generosity of spirit. The book is very good, and I hope that a rating of three stars isn't some insult where no insult is deserved. I was very disappointed because I expected a serious discussion of superadobe techniques, which I regard as possibly more practical than the ceramic constructions. The book has only seven pages treating superadobe. Those are pasted as an afterthought, right at the end. They don't constitute a detailed and serious discussion. As much information can be found on the calearth.org web site. So, I felt that the advertisements of the book were a little misleading.

The book itself is an education on classical earth construction and the improvement produced by firing it. As a person unfamiliar with architecture and construction, I had hoped to find something like a cookbook. Just tell me how to build a nice house easily, and I'd be happy to do it. Part of the education is to realize that things aren't quite so simple. Many issues arise, and, at the time of its writing, not all of them are well understood or totally settled. In particular, the details of firing a house into its ceramic status is not only explained in a partial way, but clearly more work is required to get a full understanding. The author could successfully fire houses himself, but the process was not reduced, at this writing, to entirely simple formulas for the use of lay persons. In that sense, each person working from the book would need to take on some considerable personal responsibility. It might not all work correctly. Consequently, I don't consider this book to be an especially good guide for a novice or amateur builder. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. However, I wouldn't read it, put up my own dome adobe house, and then sit down for tea underneath my own dome. The thing would probably fall in.

Are you searching for an environmentally safe alternative to building a house with hundreds of 2x4's? If so you will love this book. It is a fast read discussing one man's quest for designing houses that are safe and easy to build for everyone in the world. There are several examples of houses and schools built with this method. At the end there is a section on how to build a model house out of clay using this method. It is a fun project to do with kids. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods.

If ever a book was inspired by compassion for earthquake victims, this is it. Aware of the bitter experience of Middle East peoples with seismic disasters, architect Nader Khalili pulls together what works in those same cultures to show how we can build affordable housing that will survive major earthquakes.

Key principles: Use the earth (clay) underfoot as your building material. Spare the forests and watersheds.

Use simple human-scale building elements, like bricks or sandbags that ordinary people can stack by hand.

Use the arch, dome, and vault. These architectural forms work where post and beam timbers are not available. They are seismically stable. They are not subject to the gravitational loads that make flat roofs cave in over time. They make climatically comfortable spaces with sun and shade surfaces that circulate hot and cool air appropriately.

Fire the clay structure to make it a strong unitary enclosure, like an inverted teacup. It will slide safely over seismically moving earth.

Ceramic Houses - and Khalili's work generally - offers a timely recipe for new development and rebuilding in seismically active areas like the Middle East, and, take note, California. It's no accident that Khalili's prototype structures have been built and approved by local authorities in Hesperia, CA.

Nader Khalili brings together the clay and earth underfoot, the architectural vocabulary of arch, dome, and vault, and simple building technques that ordinary people can use to build seismically safe, comfortable, inexpensive, and beautiful houses.

This book will teach you how to make your adobe, rammed earth or cob building a permanent structure that can stand up to the elements. I wish it had more photo's, colour ones to give us an idea how this type of architecture looks in colour. It would be nice if a new edition came out since I am left with quite a few questions.

If you are interested in learning more about the beautiful structure pictured on the cover of this book, don't bother buying this book. The book provides no additional photos and only two pages of text that covers this structure at a high level - and no similar structures are covered either. Obviously these two pages were tacked on in one of the recent editions. I feel cheated.

Buy the much better "Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques (Natural Building Series)" by Hunter and Kiffmeyer instead.

It's important to understand that what is truly new and fresh can't be responsibly reduced to a cookbook. Building a house is a major undertaking, and different parts of the earth have different climates, different needs, and different earth underfoot to build from.

Khalili inspires his readers to think more openly, he urges experimentation while sharing what is known. His buildings are gorgeous, with an openness and simplicity that inspires us to question the standard boxes most of us live in.

Also inspirational is his obvious deep humanity; his love for both building AND people has enabled him to leave the usual paths and use the best qualities of the old, while infusing it with modern understanding to create wonderful new, achievable designs. I am awed. I've read this book twice, I'm building the models he recommends so I can more fully understand the structures of arch and domes, and hope to take his workshop next summer.

This is life affirming as well as life-changing.

This is a great book. I haven't read it page for page yet, but in it goes with my favourites. It concentrates on Khalili's monolithic fired ceramic houses and has a lot of detail. It leaves no stones unturned if you want a building of this type.

Sadly, the book was published before Khalili invented Superadobe or Earth Bag building. For a good book on Earthbag, I recommend "Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques"
by Kaki Hunter. Another book - which is more general is "Alternative Construction; Contemporary Natural Building Methods" by Lynne Elisabeth and Cassandra Adams.

If you are looking for a quick "how to" book, this is not it. I would recommend "Earthbag Building" by Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer for diagrams, instructions and necessary explanations. However, if you are hungry for richer, broader information, including pictures and stories of the homes Mr. Khalili helped villagers put together, and how he persuaded them to go back to the building techniques that their ancestors had embraced (quite successfully) for eons, then this book is for you.

I ordered his DVD, "Designing With Nature" first and viewed it several times. The philosophies contained therein were a great appetizer prior to reading "Ceramic Houses & Earth Architecture," which became the main course.

In Chapter 20 the book shows you how to try your hand at designing a fired brick home, using traditional red art clay. Mr. Khalili writes, "*...The traditional long training of students and apprentices produces good masons and teachers, but it will never be enough to make a dent in the world's housing shortage. For earth architecture to flourish, people must be educated--they must experience what is possible, and touch the clay with their own hands.
*Once a person has constructed a model--within hours--he or she is encouraged to learn and understand more. The knowledge thus gained will trigger quests in building with earth.
*It is possible to learn the basics of thousands of years of earth architecture within a day if it is taught in the simplest terms, and if all our senses are involved in the learning process."

Can you hang a chain between two points, and trace it's arc on a piece of paper tacked to the wall behind the chain? If so, then you have traced the arch you need to build when what you have traced is flipped bottom to top (from a "cup" shape to an "arch" shape).

Yes, a little math is helpful, however people have been building these structures for eons simply using their ten fingers and toes and so can you.

All that being said, Mr. Khalili makes it clear, if one takes the time to read what he has written, that experimentation will give you a much better outcome. He tells how to test the clay/soil bricks you've made. How to test your local soil with mason jars and water. He recommends making a very small structure first. Use his tests and don't go to the next step until you understand how to duplicate the last successful one.

I am including the Table of Contents, as I would have felt much better about spending the money on this book if I could have seen the chapter headings in advance! Perhaps this will help others know if this book is right for them.

The book is organized into the following parts:
1-THE EVOLUTION (how the ceramic house came into being)

2-PHILOSOPHY AND DESIGN PRINCIPLES (working with nature, structural principles and basic forms and designs)

3-MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES (appropriate site and materials, adobe, fired-earth adobe mixture, making adobe forms and block-making, foundations, walls how to build arches, domes and vaults, roofing and wall covering, flooring, interior finishes, openings and utilities)

4-FIRING AND CERAMIC GLAZING (firing earth structures, interior sculpting and glazing, landscaping and rehabilitation)

5-BEGINNING (making models and visions for the future)

APPENDIX (Shell membrane theory applied to masonry domes, magma, ceramic and fused adobe structures generated in situ, building codes, glossary and metric and U.S systems of weights and measures

INDEX

If these techniques were as apparent as falling off a log, we'd all be living in earth homes today. But it took generations of tinkering and tweaking to get to this point. So there is a bit to learn in order to avoid serious structural defects, bad cracking, or using the wrong materials for your climate. The book gives you what you need to know. One can either experiment and learn, or take one of the courses. Or both. Regardless of which way you learn best, the book is a valuable resource for any who are determined to live in such a durable, comfortable, relatively inexpensive "perma-culture" sort of home. The book may also be of assistance to anyone attempting to change current local building standards.

awesome resource and "how-to" book for those interested in this earth friendly type of architecture

I'm not a math whiz & to be able to build these houses. I said never mind & put the book down. There has to be something simpler.